US guidelines on food marketing to kids stalls

“Industry has gone to great lengths to improve its products,” said C. Lee Peeler, an executive vice president for the council. “Look at what has happened in the fast food industry, where fast food products that are advertised to kids are now low-calorie and a fruit or a vegetable is included. These improvements are driven by the marketplace. Self-regulation on this issue has been successful, and it will continue to grow.”

But public health advocates say there are too many loopholes to the Council of Better Business Bureaus' self-regulation.

“Part of it is that the food and beverage companies want to say that they are changing the way they market to kids without really having to change their marketing in any meaningful way,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “The guidelines would help to show how weak their current self-regulation efforts are.”

The proposed guidelines also have sparked a legal debate: Food industry representatives have resisted the draft guidelines because they argue that limitations placed on advertising violate food companies' First Amendment rights to free speech.

“By using the coercive force of government agencies to suppress truthful advertising about a broad range of healthy, legal products for every segment of the public, the proposal clearly violates the First Amendment rights of both marketers and consumers,” the Association of National Advertisers' Jaffe told legislators in October.

But Public Health Law & Policy’s Samantha K. Graff called the argument “ridiculous.”

“They are voluntary guidelines from the U.S. government and do not violate the First Amendment,” she said. “Agencies do this kind of thing all the time; it’s basic government doing its job. They are trying to distort the First Amendment and throw it into the mix to intimidate lawmakers.”

A paper to be published in February's American Journal of Public Health by Graff and the Rudd Center’s Jennifer L. Harris further argues that federal policymakers have the ability to regulate food marketing aimed at children without violating free speech laws through “carefully tailored government actions.”

Public health advocates said food and beverage industry lobbyists pushed for the delay of the final marketing report and guidelines through the December bill, which made funding contingent on additional analysis of the suggested standards. The top 10 industry donors made about $2.3 million in political contributions in 2011.

“There was so much momentum and support for the guidelines, and yet it’s been really difficult to get these published,” said Juliet Sims of Oakland's Prevention Institute, a health organization. “We will continue to really push for the guidelines to not be held up, so we have a scientific baseline. I think it’s just an indication of the fact that Congress is putting the industry’s interests before children and family health.”

An ongoing campaign by the Prevention Institute urges the federal government to take stronger actions on what it has dubbed "deceptive" advertising by junk food and fast food companies. It has launched its own campaign to appeal to President Barack Obama and federal lawmakers, arguing that food and beverage companies claim to “have our kids' best interest at heart, so why are they doing things like launching marketing campaigns disguised as charities right in our schools?”